[Richard A.]

My great-granfather joined up in 1915 here in Ottawa with the 38th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was born in London England and was 34 years old when he joined up. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme and shipped back home in 1917. His wounds troubled him until he died in the 1940's - pieces of shrapnel would now and again come up to the surface. My grandfather also joined, but he was too late to go overseas, he pre-deceased his father in a consruction accident in 1930 leaving my granmother and two kids alone in the teeth of the Great Depression.

My Great-uncle was in the army too, but again joined up too late. He was later the oldest member of the Governor General's Foot Guards (1970's) and was a tea-totaller.

I accessed the Archives web-site in Ottawa and found Attestation papers for a number of relatives of my wife from Manitoba (her father's family were originally from Alabama, having come up to take advantage of a land grant from the Dominion government in the late 19th Century)

I believe the numbers are something like this : A total of 619,636 men and women served in the Canadian forces in the First World War, and of these 66,655 gave their lives and another 172,950 were wounded. Nearly one of every ten Canadians who fought in the war did not return.


Many became flyers due to proximity to the U.S. and it's number of flying schools. I believe that there was a Curtiss flying school in Toronto before the war - hence the dis-proportionate number of successful pilots from Canada.


Every city, town, village and hamlet had wounded and killed, and so there are WW1 memorials just about everywhere.

...Lest We Forget.